The Eye and the Claw
by TisTheAdmiral
Summary: The world which Overwatch once protected is decaying. Although Overwatch has been recalled, they face resentment, vilification, and the threatening, enigmatic organization called Talon. Can they save a world which told them that it didn't want to be saved? This is my first fic. If you enjoy it or see a change it would benefit from, please follow/favorite/review it. Thanks!
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hi everyone! This is my first attempt at fanfiction, so of course I had to go for the biggest, most complex project I could have. I'm trying to tell my version of the story of Overwatch after Winston sends out the recall message. Of course, a large part of this fic is headcanon, as so many have to be, and it, in large part, disregards the limitations the heroes have in-game in favor of what I view as more potentially realistic limitations. Story-wise, this is going to be quite the broad story. Overwatch will be dealing with the emergence of Talon (which will be treated as, primarily, a very large, anti-Omnic terrorist faction), while simultaneously having to conceal the fact that they have reactivated from the IJC. In case you can't tell yet, this might be a very long fic.

I'm going to be working with three primary factions, as well as non-aligned characters, for this fic. These factions will be Overwatch (of course ;)), Talon, which will be treated as a large anti-Omnic terrorist organization, the IJC (which will not be a major faction and will not contain characters from the game) and various neutral characters. Following is a list of the factions and which heroes appear in each, for easy memory. Note that these factions only apply at the beginning of the fic, and are subject to change throughout.

Overwatch: Genji, Pharah, Soldier: 76, Tracer, Mei, Torbjorn, D. Va, Reinhart, Winston, Zarya, Mercy, Lucio

Talon: Widowmaker, Reaper (also will feature OCs of my own creation, mostly as operatives and leaders)

Neutral: McCree, Hanzo, Bastion, Junkrat, Roadhog, Symmetra, Zenyatta, Ana

Obviously, this will be a world-spanning story, but I intend to primarily follow the story of just a few characters, specifically Tracer, Soldier: 76, and Widowmaker, with occasional forays into other characters' viewpoints.

There will be multiple romantic aspects to the story, although due to both of them being main characters, Tracer/Widowmaker will be getting the most screen time, with other pairings to be shipped as necessary/desired. I haven't written much romance before, so bear with me and give me critiques if you feel it needs improvement.

Wow! Sorry about the long author's note.

TL;DR: First fic! Overwatch after getting recalled vs Talon. Mostly about Tracer, Soldier: 76, and Widowmaker, with a WidowTracer ship. Gonna be long. Hopefully, most of the author's notes won't be :P.

This fic is rated M for alcohol and drug use/abuse, graphic violence, profanity, character death, mental illness, and potential lemon. Trigger warnings will be posted before chapters with more intense occurrences.

Please review! The more reviews I get, the better I can make the story.

* * *

Winston's message goes out, and the world changes. For most people in the world, it's an unnoticeable change at the time, and one which they might not find welcome. For a few, of course, it is an immediate, notable change.

Each former agent of Overwatch, save one, receives a call, email, or message, based on the preference they'd listed long ago, back when they had originally joined. For all of them, it is a surprise, to some degree. The more politically aware ones are less surprised, having watched the slow erosion of everything they stood for, while those who had simply embraced their lives as ordinary (or perhaps relatively normal would be a better term, as Overwatch agents were seldom _ordinary_ ) citizens are more surprised. Of all those who receive the notification, most ignore it, or fail to heed the call. They are not cowards, or lazy, but simply those who believe that Overwatch's time has truly passed. However, some do not.

 _Japan:_

A ninja sitting in a cherry tree, meditating calmly above the wreck of a Bastion-class Omnic sentry, is abruptly jerked from his introspection by an… _insistence_ within his own mind. No ordinary human being could or would have reason to describe how the ninja _feels_ the message coming to him, but few humans have undergone the degree of cybernetic reconstruction and enhancement that Genji Shimada has. He listens calmly for the few moments that the message takes, and then sits for a moment more, assimilating and considering this new event. Then he slides down from the tree, bows respectfully to the wreck of the Bastion for allowing him the use of its tree, and begins to lope off across the mountain peaks towards civilization, knowing that the cause he has sought so long has finally appeared.

 _China:_

Mei-lin Zhou is running a weather simulation in her lab when the message comes in. She squeaks in surprise at the sudden pop-up on her desktop, then darts a guilty look around the room. Fortunately, nobody is there but her faithful drone companion to have heard her outburst. She listens to the message, then shuts down the simulation and picks up her phone. Her boss is more than willing to let her take some time off- after all, she is the best climatologist in China. She hangs up on Doctor Yung and immediately dials Beijing Airport. She needs to get on a flight to Gibraltar, and she needs to do it now. For once, her frequent uncertainty has deserted her.

 _Greenland:_

An old man, sitting in a rocking chair in front of a fire, stands up and walks into his bedroom. He has to duck to get beneath the door. Straightening up, he looks into a closet. A suit of armor, scarred and worn, hangs above a carrying case. Next to it is a gigantic hammer. Methodically, Reinhardt Wilhelm begins to disassemble his armor and hammer and load it into its case.

 _Egypt:_

The sentries standing watch at the Temple of Anubis are surprised when they see that Lieutenant Fahir is sitting in the commander's office. They are even more surprised to hear that it's because Captain Amari has taken leave for "at least a month, possibly more," according to the brief video she left with the lieutenant to explain to the troops. They wonder where she has gone that could be more important to her than keeping Anubis contained.

 _Sweden:_

A Swedish inventor's workshop is unusually quiet for this time in the day. When his neighbors venture over, they find that it is, in fact, empty. They wonder what could have drawn Torbjorn away from his work, not realizing that what has happened is not that, but a call from a task that was once his labor of love.

 _Brazil:_

A crowded club in downtown Rio is really rocking tonight. Lucio is in town, and he's dropped by _la Rana Fumadores_ to pre-show his latest concert track. However, during the middle of a particularly intense track, he announces that he has to take a call. Not too many people even notice his announcement, since he leaves the track running and most are too busy rocking out to pay attention. Even fewer realize that he doesn't return, at least until the playlist ends. By that time, they're too tired to care, having danced for hours on end. They filter back to their houses, or in some cases other locations, without realizing that the concert tomorrow has been abruptly, if informally, canceled.

 _Russia:_

On a military base near Saint Petersburg, Russia, a group of recruits stands up and comes to parade rest with a distinct feeling of relief. _Starshiy Serzhant_ Zaryanova has been distracted by something. Those closer to her hear the buzz of her personal com-link and relax slightly. After all, if she is being paged by the _Komendant_ , she won't be running their asses into the ground… without breaking a sweat. However, their relief is short-lived. "All right, _shchenki._ Get back on noses!" the hulking instructor growls. "I will be leaving for some time. However, _Serzhant_ Golovko is taking over the training now." The recruits groan. If there is one instructor more ferocious than Zaryanova, it is certainly Golovko. Aleksandra walks off the parade deck, swings by her quarters, and picks up a box and a suitcase full of clothes. Within an hour, she is on a helicopter headed to the Mediterranean.

 _Korea:_

Hana Song absently flicks her long, dark hair out of her face and takes a slug of NanoCola. She generally prefers Mountain Dew, but the terms of her sponsorship require that she drink it when live-streaming and it's not objectionable enough to toss that kind of money out the window. Her base is under a great deal of threat, but she has an ace up her sleeve. Her carefully hidden units of Stalkers suddenly appear to the side of her opponent's attack, and while he's reacting, her Mothership completes. Her opponent had banked everything on pushing before she could complete that, and his assault wave is utterly wiped out. She already has scouts pushing out along his line of advance when her link buzzes. Her streamers watch her face change from annoyance to surprise to excitement as the call proceeds, and then Hana Song does something nobody has ever seen her do before. She forfeits the game and walks away, shutting her computer down behind her.

 _Switzerland:_

Doctor Ziegler steps into the surgeons' lounge with a sigh of unabashed relief and nearly collapses onto a sofa. The procedure had lasted for twelve hours straight, and had come right on the heels of a six-hour one, so she has been working for eighteen hours without a break. However, she finds it all worthwhile: two people who would certainly have been dead without her help will now live. Angela Ziegler does not count the cost when it comes to saving lives. However, she is only human, and finds herself mildly irritated (she doesn't have the energy to muster true irritation or annoyance right now) when her buzzer goes off, notifying her of… Her tiredness falls away and her eyes shoot open as she sees Winston's message. She stands up, and walks downstairs. Moments later, she is behind the wheel of her Mercedes, speeding off to the south.

 _Italy:_

A soldier stands up from where he was crouching among the fallen bodies of a gang. This time, the gang's members are mostly lucky. They are almost all alive, although unconscious, and the soldier has been distracted in time for them not to awake handcuffed, with the police pulling up. Morrison heaves himself up a nearby gutter drain, crouching behind the wall atop the building as he considers the message. Overwatch recalled. A tide of emotions nearly swamps him- it would have, if it were not for his years of command experience. Memories of camaraderie, joy, sorrow, betrayal, anger, and hope flood his mind, and he battles to keep them in check. His discipline finally wins out. He is the first to respond to Winston's message, although he does not do so directly. Rather, he calls Athena, on the commander's encrypted line. "Athena, this is Morrison. Ensure this is an encrypted line and do not reveal that this conversation is happening. Authorization is Alfa-Niner-Zero-Three."

"Yes, sir," responds the AI. "Why are you calling me and not Winston?"

"I'm dead, Athena. I think, for the moment, it should stay that way. Do _not_ show that I have accepted recall. Just slip me in as one of the rank and file."

"Yes, Commander Morrison. Your new identity is Soldier: 76. It should hold, and your story can be that you don't want your identity getting out because of the damage it could do your reputation to have rejoined Overwatch."

"Very well, Athena. I'm on the way."

 _England:_

Lena Oxton tumbles out of her bed in a flat in London with a scream of fear. She fights the covers she's tangled in for a few moments. Her eyes finally snap open and she sees the walls of her room. The sheer relief in her face, which moments ago had been contorted with fear and desperation would be painful to look at if any could see it. Most people would not show such relief at seeing a flat inhabited by a twenty-six-year-old, and this one is no exception to the generally quite disordered norm. Most people, for that matter, don't wake up screaming, even from a nightmare. Most people have not lived their nightmares, though.

Lena has, and the horror of it is not just the experience she has been through, but the fact that she knows well how easy it would be for it to happen again. Even asleep, she wears her chronal accelerator. It's heavy and means that she literally cannot sleep in her once-normal position (flat on her belly, with her head preferably covered by pillows to block out the sounds of the morning world), but to take it off, except in her rooms at the various Overwatch bases, would banish her to living that nightmare forever. This dream has been particularly brutal. In it, she dreamed of the night just two weeks ago when she failed to save Mondatta… only this time, she caught Widowmaker's bullet. Her conscious mind will never forgive her for her instant, survival-based reflex dodge, but her nightmares do their best to remind her of what the other option was, and a part of her which is bigger than she likes to admit thinks that even saving Mondatta would not have been worth the cost.

She huddles in the middle of the floor, shaking, as the memory of the dream, and worse, the memories of the dream's basis, flood through her again. Panic holds her frozen for an eternity which actually lasts about five minutes. Winston's call breaks the silence in her room and unfreezes her, her good friend's voice breaking through the immobilizing fear. She stands, crosses the room, and hits Reply. "Winston, is that you, love? It's been too long!"

"It has," Winston responds. "Are you coming?"

"You bet your arse I am!" she laughs. The laughter is half her personality, half the sheer relief of release from her fear. "I wouldn't miss it for worlds, Winston. I'll be there as quick as I can." She turns back to her room, tossing through it and putting together the clothing and gear she needs for her return. The joy she feels at the thought of seeing her friends again is strong enough that she can forget about her fears. If home is where the heart is, she is going home.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: So I was debating whether or not to do a chapter about the gang getting back together at Overwatch HQ before having them jump into a battle against Talon, but I decided not to. If you'd prefer that I had, please PM me or leave a comment. If I get enough requests, I'll write the chapter and slip it in. By the way, to any bothered by it, the space I'm leaving in D. Va's name is because of some weird formatting issue I'm having.

* * *

 _India (Pharah):_

"Go! Go! Go!" With these words from Pharah, the current pilot of the Sentinel-class transport, Overwatch's strike force runs down the disembarkation ramp. Pharah waits just a fraction of a second once the last agent, the soldier calling himself 76, has cleared the ramp, and then dusts off at high speed. She lands the transport atop a parking garage, engages its cloaking, and kicks in her Raptora's thrust at maximum, straining to catch up to the rest of the strike team. With so few agents having returned, every one of them will be crucial in the oncoming fight.

 _Tracer:_

Athena's discovery didn't come a moment too soon. Talon has launched an operation targeting a museum exhibit in Numbani, where Doomfist's gauntlet is currently on display. The artifact is powerful enough that Overwatch can't allow it to fall into the hands of the organization which has been wreaking such havoc across the globe. Lena feels somewhat guilty for not flying, since she's almost positive she could have gotten here even faster than Pharah did, but the last time she flew was…

She shudders, blocking out the memory. She can't allow herself to think about that right now. Instead, she turns her head over her shoulder to look back at the team, while triggering her chronal accelerator to boost her personal time passage for her signature "dash." It doesn't really move her, it just allows her to move in a time-stream which is faster than the rest of the world, but the effect is much the same, and she reappears perhaps fifteen meters ahead of where she "should" have been.

"Hurry, loves! We don't have much time!" Lena runs ahead of the team, seeking to get to the museum before Talon's strike force can. Only Winston can keep up with her chronally accelerated sprints, leaping ahead alongside her. The rest of the force sprints along behind them, spreading out in anticipation of contact.

"Tracer, you and Winston go ahead. The rest of us will get a perimeter set up and try to stop Talon before they can arrive," says the unidentified Soldier: 76. His voice seems familiar to Lena, but she can't place it, and before she can dedicate any more thought to it, something flashes across her field of view and plows into the building behind the team with a shockingly loud blast. She looks up and sees a black-clad figure standing atop one of the lower roofs of the museum with a rocket launcher. Before she can react, Pharah triggers her launcher and the shooter is tossed sideways, landing limply, as a rocket explodes less than a meter from him.

"Winston!" Lena shouts, and the gorilla scientist triggers his jump pack, hurling himself through the air and crashing down on top of a glass dome, flying through it and barely even slowing down. She follows, boosting her time-rate as much as she dares and darting towards the exhibit hall.

 _Soldier: 76:_

Morrison sees Tracer and Winston dash ahead. He'd personally have preferred to keep the group together, concentrating their firepower and blowing their way in unstoppably, but he understands the necessity of interrupting any Talon agents inside, if only to minimize the civilian casualties which Talon has no qualms about inflicting. Besides, he trusts the two to keep each other mostly out of trouble, or at least intact. He turns his attention to working the fight outside. He isn't in command of the operation, but he is second, and since the first in command just jumped through a glass dome and is no longer giving orders, he takes over the fight outside.

"Pharah! Get to high ground and lay down suppressive fire! Reinhardt, take Lucio and Genji and try to push forward. Get inside and make sure nobody gets in behind Winston and Tracer. Zarya! Mercy! Mei! Try to outflank to the left. If you can, get to somewhere you can pin down those bastards in the garage. D. Va, Torbjorn, follow me!" He dashes to cover. The Talon operative with the rocket launcher was the first to fire, but several more have already opened up, and he hears the impacts of solid slugs crunching into the wall he's ducked behind.

 _At least two gunners,_ he thinks. _Probably battle rifles, no more than thirty rounds in a magazine. Forty-eight, fifty-three…_ when he's counted sixty impacts, he spins out. One of the Talon gunners has ducked down to reload, but the other was foolish enough to remain upright while he dropped out his magazine, and Jack's tactical visor means that he knows exactly where the shooters are. Morrison squeezes the trigger, and his pulse rifle launches a burst of plasma downrange, flinging the idiot backwards in a spray of blood. When the other gunner pops upright, he fires again, this time a burst of three pulses, which knocks that gunner down too, dead or wounded. D. Va dashes by, using her mech's fusion cannons to set up a near-impenetrable interdiction field, and Jack takes the opportunity to reposition himself.

Torbjorn already has a turret positioned, and it's doing an admirable job of pinning down three gunners on the roof, so Morrison dashes across the road and fires a trio of rockets at their position. He rolls into cover as the rockets hit, but he's not the only one firing and a burst of fire stitches its way across the alley mouth just after he reaches it. A ricochet grazes across his knuckle, leaving a small, bloody scratch, but he's had much worse. From her position on the roof, Pharah launches a rocket which blasts the gunner apart, and Jack moves again, hammering another gunner's position with sustained automatic fire. His rifle's power pack flashes a red warning light as it drains its last bit of energy, and he ducks into cover to reload.

 _Tracer:_

Her chronal accelerator is flickering, so she rolls to cover… and spots the two kids cowering there. _Oh no, why aren't you out of here?_ is her first thought. But she has to say something, something to keep these kids from panicking and doing something that's just likely to get them killed. "Don't worry, loves. Cavalry's here," she says, picking a line she's sure they'll recognize and saying it in the most comforting tone she can manage. Across the room, Winston begins to charge, but Reaper turns both his shotguns on him, and then slides away as a shadow before Winston reaches him. The scientist collapses, battered nearly unconscious by the hammering of both heavy-gauge shotguns. _No, this can't be! I can't help him right now, but I need to!_ she thinks. "Come on, big guy. Get up," she murmurs, almost without noticing.

Widowmaker's shot shatters the glass surrounding the gauntlet, and Reaper rematerializes, moving in for the _coup de grace_ on Winston. Her chronal accelerator continues to send low power signals, and she worries that she's overstrained it. That thought nearly brings on a panic attack, and she freezes up for a moment, but her worry for Winston helps her fight it back. She peeks out just in time to see Reaper bring a booted foot down on her friend's glasses, and then hears the most welcome sound in the world- the hum of her chronal accelerator's "nominal power" signal. She darts out to rejoin the fight, in time to see Winston lunge forward.

 _Widowmaker:_

Widowmaker steps forward, about to seize the gauntlet, but then hears the crunch of breaking glass and the roar of an enraged gorilla. " _Imbécile!_ " she mutters, snapping her visor back down and stepping out to open fire. Across the room, Reaper is getting pummeled by the enraged Winston, a sight she can't help mildly enjoying - she'd appreciate it more if Talon had left more room for emotion, but they didn't. However, she _does_ need to help her ally, and so she starts shooting. Reaper finally manages to resume his insubstantial form, shifting the nanotech which makes up his body into a cloud which is much harder to damage, and she turns back, only to be shocked when the gauntlet is no longer there.

She begins to stalk around the pedestal, when a young voice shouts "Watch out!" She turns, bringing up her rifle to aim at the fool who drew her attention, only to hear someone say "Hey!" behind her. She spins, just in time for the other boy who she'd seen earlier being shielded by Winston to slam the Doomfist directly into her midsection. She goes flying, landing barely conscious. She turns to see Reaper rematerialize, just about helpless- he must have overstrained his nanotech body too much for it to maintain separation and remain linked to the control unit- in front of the two Overwatch agents. She reacts, firing a grapnel up to the waiting, cloaked Talon dropship, and swinging across the room, grabbing her incapacitated partner and reeling herself in.

Winston leaps after them, but his jump pack simply can't boost that far under this much gravity and the dropship accelerates away even as she continues to wind in. She sees why a moment later. The rest of the Talon strike team is dead, critically wounded, or unconscious, scattered across the perimeter of the museum. _Quel disastre,_ she thinks to herself as she heaves Reaper, who is beginning to return to consciousness, into the passenger bay of the dropship, and then pulls herself in after him. Judging by the blast of pain in her lower chest as she does so, that punch broke a few ribs. She'd be angry, both at the boy for the injury and herself, for the failed mission, if Talon had left her the capability to.

 _Tracer:_

Having returned the (now apparently pretty bloody broken) gauntlet to its pedestal, Lena dashes outside, leaping gracefully up and out the massive hole in the dome covering the room. She winces at the destruction outside. The once-graceful architecture of the museum is shattered and torn in several places. Apparently, giving Overwatch agents (except for herself, of course, she thinks wryly) lots and lots of explosives on a combat mission – or pretty much anytime – is contraindicated. However, most of Talon's gunmen appear to have been neutralized, and she is elated when the comm channel breaks out with an unbroken series of status reports, all of her friends reporting that they remain mostly unscathed.

Boarding the flight back, Tracer thinks back to the fight with Reaper and Widowmaker. She has got to see Winston about getting her chronal accelerator recalibrated, or maybe even upgraded. The amount she'd used it prior to it nearly shutting down shouldn't have drained the power to that extent, should it? The realization of how close she'd come to being cast back into that _between_ state nearly triggers a panic attack, but Reinhardt's tooth-jarring backslap distracts her long enough for it to subside to barely manageable levels. She hugs him back, and because nobody can see her face, nobody realizes that it's not in congratulations or joy at seeing him, but in thanks. Still, while her teammates chat excitedly about the success of their first operation, she spends most of the flight home silent, brooding over her close call, and her internal turmoil means that she doesn't notice how worried Mercy looks whenever she glances over.

 _Talon Base Alpha, unknown location (Widowmaker):_

"This mission's result was… disappointing," states Liao, during Widowmaker and Reaper's debrief. "What happened to cause this _chèdǐ de shībài_?"

"Well, _un raison_ was that nobody thought to warn us that Overwatch had been reactivated," Widowmaker responds. "Did nobody think to warn us of that, or was it unknown?"

"We had no indication that such an unfortunate event had occurred," replies another of the debriefers, who calls himself Volskoff. "Is this true?"

"Unless you can think of some other reason why Winston, Tracer, Mercy, Pharah, and several other known, or in one case unidentified, ex-Overwatch agents would have shown up, I think we have to assume that that is indeed the case," growls Reaper. He's clearly still upset at himself for his error in not finishing Winston off immediately.

"Liao?" says Volskoff, raising an eyebrow. "Did you have any indication that such a thing happened?"

" _Méiyǒu._ No," says Liao. "However, their arrival does appear to have been the main reason for the failure of the operation. As such, we cannot blame Widowmaker and Reaper for the failure of this mission."

Both agents relax in relief. However, Widowmaker soon speaks up again. "What actions shall we take regarding the return of Overwatch?"

It turns out rapidly that there is no plan for this situation, which does not exactly fill Widowmaker with confidence. However, there is nothing to be done about it, so she and Reaper take their leave.


	3. Chapter 3

Trigger warning: a major anxiety attack occurs in this chapter. If you find this upsetting, please stop reading, as no work of fiction is worth emotional harm.

* * *

 _Gibraltar (Tracer):_

Lena wanders down the hall. With the combination of the safety of her room here, which has a chronal synchronization field much like her accelerator's, and the reassurance of seeing her friends daily, she's actually managing to relax a bit. She does, however, need to get Winston to look over her chronal accelerator. The rate at which the power pack discharged during the Numbani mission was unusual, and combined with the fact that it's been five years since it's been looked over by anyone but her, she is determined to get it fixed.

"Hey, big guy!" she shouts cheerfully as she walks (well, "barges" might be a better term) into Winston's lab.

"Oh, hello, Lena!" Winston heaves himself out of an access hatch on a shuttle that he's trying to… upgrade? Fix? Disassemble? Whatever it is, it seems to involve a great number of circuit boards scattered on the ground next to the access panel. "What is it?"

"I was wondering if you could look over my chronal accelerator, Winston," Lena says.

"Not a problem," Winston replies. "Umm… Could you help me pick up these circuit boards? Just put them on that table there." Lena scoops up a dozen or so, taking a moment to look some of them over. They're archaic, at least a decade old. Upgrade, then. Without thinking, she cycles her chronal accelerator to zip over to the indicated table.

The accelerator flickers mid-cycle, and she comes out halfway there, and at least three seconds slower than she should have. Lena screams as she feels herself come half apart across her timeline before the accelerator re-cycles, spitting her back out into real-time.

"Lena!" Winston exclaims. "What happened?"

Lena staggers and tumbles to the ground as she rematerializes, gasping and shaking, panic gripping her mind. She curls up involuntarily, then forces herself to uncurl. _No, I can't. I can't let this happen,_ she thinks. _If they find out how… broken… I am, what will they think of me?_ Panic still clutches at her mind, but she battles it, forcing herself to sound as normal as she can. "Winston, I think you should probably take a look at it _now,_ " she says breathlessly.

"Of course," Winston says, sounding worried. "Let's get you back to your room."

The walk back to her room is the longest walk she can remember, fighting to keep from freezing or freaking out while she's in public. When they reach her room, she steps inside, takes off her chronal accelerator, and hands it to Winston. "Thanks, love," she says, in what she hopes sounds like a relatively cheerful tone. "How long do you think it'll be?"

"I couldn't say for sure, Lena," replies the gorilla. "If it weren't for how dramatically it just glitched, just an hour or so, but since it happened, I'm going to have to do a full workup. I'd guess it'll be at least three hours to figure out what's wrong and fix it. Don't worry, I'll be done before supper."

"Great!" Lena says with false cheerfulness, which she hopes sounds less forced to her friend than it does to her. "Would you be a love and drop it off back here when you're done?"

"No problem," responds Winston. "Are you going to be okay? I'm sure that must have been frightening."

"Yes!" she replies hurriedly. "Yes, I'll be fine. No worries!" She grins, hoping to emphasize how very okay she is. "See you in a bit, love!" She shuts the door the moment Winston turns around, then curls up in an armchair. The panic she feels at how near she came to… _that_ again floods her mind, and she shudders. Lena _hates_ how she feels at these times. Once a fearless, brilliant pilot, she still has the pride and utter self-confidence common to pilots in every day and age, and that part of her can't _stand_ the feeling of utter helplessness she experiences at these times. She curls up tighter, mentally savaging herself for her panic and cowardice. _Why can't you deal with this, you bloody coward? You used to be able to handle it, why can't you anymore? Why are you so weak, so broken?_ Once, she had been able to cope better. But one of the shoulders she leaned on (and occasionally cried on) then is now dead, and the other one is more likely to brace a sniper rifle and put a bullet between her eyes than it is to support her these days, and her pride won't let her reach out to find another supporter, for though she knows intellectually that her friends would all be more than willing to help, her emotions will not listen to reason.

It takes an hour for her to relax somewhat, for the panic filling her mind to subside. The three and a half hours it takes from then until Winston returns, lugging what looks like a totally rebuilt chronal accelerator, are spent reading, pacing, and surfing the Internet. Anything, in short, that Lena can do to keep her mind off what just happened. When Winston enters her room, carrying the accelerator, she tackle-hugs him out of sheer relief. "Thanks, big guy!" she laughs, the relaxation of seeing her chronal accelerator rebuilt manifesting as pure joy.

"You're welcome, Lena," he replies. "It seems that there was some shock damage to the accelerator's power leads, which was causing a short to drain the power cell. It's fixed now."

"Great!" she says, grinning with totally unfeigned happiness. She straps the accelerator back on. "Almost time for dinner, right?"

 _Mercy:_

Angela collapses back into her chair. Even though Overwatch's mission to Numbani had been a complete success, it didn't come without a cost, and as Overwatch's only medic right now (although Lucio's music can accelerate natural healing, it's not enough for any sort of major injury), she's had to deal with the various bangs, scrapes, broken bones and gunshot wounds that Overwatch accumulated on the mission. She's only now cleared out the infirmary, two days after the mission- Torbjorn had taken a nasty hit to the thigh from a Talon machine-gunner, and Reinhardt had broken his arm stopping a rocket on his shield. He'd succeeded, but he was getting old, and mending the break had taken almost as long as healing the wound in Torbjorn's leg. She's just released Torbjorn, with a humorously sarcastic remark about using some of the armor he makes, instead of just handing it out, when Winston lumbers in.

"Winston? What is it?"

"I'm a bit worried about Lena, Mercy," he responds, looking almost guilty at mentioning it.

"What happened?" she asks. She has an inkling of what it might be about, but she can't be sure.

Winston recounts the events in his lab an hour ago, concluding by saying, "Lena's one of my best friends, Mercy, and she's acting like something's wrong, but she's not talking to me about it. I was hoping you could help out."

"Well, Winston, I'll see what I can do. I'm afraid, though, that if she's not willing to open up, there won't be much I can do." _There may not be much I can do anyways,_ she thinks. _I'm not a therapist, but we do need one, and I'm the closest we have._

(later)

Angela is trying as hard as she can to think of an excuse to get Lena to talk to her for a while, but the gregarious young woman is chatting happily with Lucio and Hana, and she can't think of a plausible, non-intrusive way to get Tracer away from the group. _I can talk to her after dinner,_ she decides. _I'll catch her on her way back to her room._ Relaxing somewhat, she turns back to the cafeteria line, only to turn in shock as Athena activates the intercom loudspeakers at what seems to be maximum volume.

 _Tracer:_

"…and so, the latest album I'm doing is going to draw themes off of some of this older music I've found," says Lucio enthusiastically. "It's called symphonic metal, and it's got a really interesting interplay of vocals and the metal track. I'm going to try to partly duplicate that, but with more synthetic influence, _sabé?_ " Most of his description goes right over Lena's head. She enjoys Lucio's music, but he's _way_ more knowledgeable about it than she is- her enjoyment tends to simply be along the lines of "Wow, this sounds pretty wicked! I like it!" Hana seems to understand about as much of Lucio's spiel as Lena does, but they both nod. After all, they both have their own pastimes which they describe in sometimes excruciating detail to the less fully initiated.

Lucio is, however, interrupted by Athena's announcement. "Hello, everyone. I've just picked up a broadcast from the IJC, and I think it needs to be shared with all of you. This information could be critical to our continued operations."

The main display in the cafeteria flickers on and they see the face of the current IJC chairman. "Hello, citizens. This is a very important piece of news. We have just received an assessment of the mysterious events at the Overwatch Museum in Numbani. It appears that several ex-Overwatch agents interfered with an operation by the shadow organization known as Talon. As much as we at the IJC are glad that Talon's operation was stopped, we must take a moment to remind our viewers that the group which stopped them, which may be an indicator that Overwatch is trying to reform, cannot truly be viewed as a better option than Talon."

An image flashes up on the screen behind the chairman. The museum is in ruins, scorched and shattered by the vicious firefight within and without. "Neither the group of criminals who style themselves as Talon nor the criminal organization once calling itself Overwatch have the best interests of the world at heart, whatever they may profess. The damage caused by their clash in Numbani is proof enough of that. We urge any citizens with information about the reformation of Overwatch or the terrorist organization Talon to immediately share it with us here at the International Justice Commission of the United Nations. Thank you all, this concludes this emergency report."

The cafeteria, so noisy just moments before, becomes dead silent.

* * *

A/N: Wow, maybe I should have tagged this fic angst. I will try to write my next chapter without Tracer battling a panic attack. It makes for easy dramatic tension, but I think I'm using it too much as a crutch, and I'll try to make the next chapter use other sources of suspense and drama. OTOH, I don't know if I've ever written anything over one chapter _without_ the main character having major angst going on, so I'm not sure how well I'll hold to that.

Also, I probably should have put this in earlier, but all characters/locations/etc. are the intellectual property of Blizzard, not me. I just use the fantastic stuff they made up.

I'm actually kind of surprised by how fast I've managed to put these first three chapters up. I'm sorry to say it, but this rate of update probably will reduce significantly within the next week. Not only am I going to be much busier, but I also want to take more time and give you guys better stories.

See you around!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Hi guys! I'm actually kind of surprised at how big and generally positive a response I've gotten to this fic. Thanks to all of you!

* * *

 _Gibraltar (Soldier: 76):_

"Bastards," growls Morrison, and nobody at the table seems to disagree. "They cast us out, and then when we actually succeed in stopping the terrorists, they call _us_ terrorists?"

"Well, it is somewhat understandable," says Mercy, ever the peacemaker. "After all, you can hardly expect them to admit that we did something they could not and still call it a good thing. They do want to maintain power."

"Does that even matter?" booms Reinhardt. " _Wir sind keine terroristen!_ If we were, would we have stopped Talon from seizing the Doomfist and leveling Numbani? _Dies ist ein Schandfleck auf unserer Ehre!_ To call _us_ terrorists? _Hurensöhne!_ " Reinhardt often gives the lie to the image of the detached, unemotional German, and this is one of those times.

"Never mind," says Jack, battling his own fury into submission. "We shouldn't be worrying about insults from a bunch of incompetent political careerists. What we need to worry about instead is how to send a counter-message. If we can convince the populace that we are _not_ what the IJC is calling us, then we may be able to become legitimate."

"How do you suggest doing that, 76?" asks Winston. The senior agents gathered at the table turn as one to look at Jack, and he grins, though they can't see it under the mask.

"We need to carry out more operations. Stop Talon at every opportunity; even prevent their attacks if we can. But our primary mission can't just be that. We need to not just stop them, but _finish_ them. If we do that, would anyone in the world still be able to question our intentions?"

"You make a good point, 76," says Winston. "How to manage it, though…"

(later)

Morrison sighs and sets down his tablet, slumping back into his chair and regretting his suggestion at dinner. Since then, he has been going through every instance of a Talon operation that Athena has logged, trying to somehow find a pattern or a lead that would allow Overwatch to find out where Talon is based. Even if they fail to find the headquarters, finding any base would allow them to launch a strike and recover information, as well as dealing a heavy blow to Talon's ability to conduct operations for a while. But the sheer amount of data that Athena has gathered over the years is staggering, and he's just about burned out.

He shrugs, and admits to himself that the research he's been doing is not the only thing that's causing him to feel burned out. It's hard to conceal the fact that he is Commander Jack Morrison from the other agents. After all, all of them worked with him for a long time, and it's becoming more and more difficult to hide that he's their onetime commander, especially as he sinks further and further into the routines of Overwatch. _I need a break,_ he decides, and walks out of his quarters towards the common areas of Watchpoint: Gibraltar.

When he arrives at the rec room, it is as full as it can be with Overwatch's current staffing. The small automated bar is seeing some heavy traffic. Reinhardt and Zarya are matching shots of what looks like neat vodka at the bar, and Torbjorn is trying valiantly to keep up, while the Amari girl is nursing some kind of violently red cocktail and keeping an eye on Mercy, who looks to have killed about half a bottle of Scotch. He's glad Fareeha is keeping an eye on Mercy- the doctor has, a few times, gotten drunk to the point of insensibility, although it's true that he's never seen her have a hangover, even after drinking herself unconscious. A person can only see so many dead bodies before they need an escape, and Angela must have crossed that line years before she joined Overwatch.

For a moment, he's tempted to go join them, but he shakes his head. He can't afford to reveal his identity yet, and he knows that he can't keep up with Reinhardt and Angela. Instead, he wanders over to a table in the corner of the room, where Winston, Lena, Hana, and Lucio are playing some kind of card game. As he gets closer, he determines it to be poker. He checks his pocket, sees that he does have some cash to buy in with, and pulls up a chair. "Deal me in," he says to Winston, who has the deal.

Cards whisper as the scientist says, "Five card draw." Lena appears to be winning at the moment, with a sizeable pile of bills and coins in front of her. "Twenty-five cent ante," continues the gorilla.

"Any luck, Winston?" asks Jack, tossing in a coin and picking up his hand, which shows ace high, followed by a jack, ten, eight, and seven.

"Nothing," replies Winston, with a shake of his head. "They really seem to have covered their tracks well."

Hana has the bet, and after a brief glance at her hand, tosses in three coins. "Seventy-five new yen." The three major currencies of the world are new yen, dollars, and euros, and most people know the exchange rates well enough that they're all accepted just about anywhere.

Jack checks his hand, and picks up a few coins from his own stack. "Call," he says, tossing them in. "Any of you find anything?"

"No, man," says Lucio, looking over his hand and tossing a bill into the pot. "Raise you two euros. Anyways, I haven't ever heard anything about any Talon ops, and I've had a pretty good ear to the ground in _el Sud,ya sabés?_ "

"I haven't heard anything either, mate," says Lena. "Five euros called to the dealer. I ran into Widowmaker at that bloody mess where Mondatta was assassinated, but I couldn't tail their dropship. They've got damned good stealth tech, and I didn't have anything to fly after them with."

"Dealer calls, six bucks twenty-five," sighs Winston. "To you, Hana."

"Call," says Hana, throwing two more coins onto the stack. "I heard that there was a Talon op in Australia that got blown, though. I bet if we went down there, we could find some leads."

"Who blew it?" asks Jack, throwing another dollar and fifty cents onto the pile. "Call, pot's light."

As they draw cards, Hana goes into deeper explanation of the blown Talon operation in the Australian outback. Apparently, a pair of Australian outlaws blew the hell out of a Talon mission to sabotage an attempt by the Omnics to recover some parts from the Outback omnium. By the end of another round of betting, Jack has fifteen dollars in the pot and the beginnings of a plan fermenting in his head. When the final call comes out, Jack lays down his hand with a grin. "Two pair, tens over sevens."

Hana groans. "GG. All I've got is a _jigyeoun_ pair of fives."

Winston and Lucio also throw their hands in. Lena, however, grins. "Three twos, love. Sorry!" She pulls in another stack of mixed currency and looks around. "Another round, people?"

"No, you've taken enough of my money for tonight, Lena," Winston says mock-mournfully. Hana, Lucio, and Jack voice assent.

"I need to go talk to Athena," Jack says. "There's something I need to look into."

 _The next day (Tracer):_

"Australia?" Lena asks in surprise. "Why are they going to Australia?"

"There's a lead there which might get us some valuable information on Talon operations in that area," replies Winston.

"All right," she replies. "So what are the rest of us going to do?"

"Wait," is Winston's response.

Lena is not good at waiting. In fact, "not good" is a pale description of it. Instead of just hanging around, she decides to go wander about the nearby town. Hana and Lucio agree to go with her, and they walk off into the town. They are all dressed rather normally, although Lena is wearing a large-cut jacket to cover her chronal accelerator and pulse pistols. At Hana's insistence, they go to the mall in town and spend nearly an hour at the arcade, where Lena and Lucio are repeatedly and figuratively hammered into the dirt by their short, energetic companion.

They wander into a café nearby, and Lena notices a poster on the wall. _Coming Soon! Lecture Tour by Lokhara of the Shambali! August 20-23 from 3 to 5! Free entry!_ "Say, Hana, what day is it?" she asks.

"The twenty-first," Hana replies absently as she demolishes a massive dish of chocolate ice cream. Her capacity to stuff in junk food has always amazed Lena. "Why?"

"Lokhara of the Shambali's giving a lecture not too far from here in about half an hour. I'd like to go. I've always admired the Shambali," Lena responds. Lucio and Hana nod assent and return to their snacks.

 _Gibraltar (Widowmaker):_

Her new target is an Omnic monk on a lecture tour in Europe. Lokhara is his name. Widowmaker feels some slight anxiety at the prospect of attempting an assassination so close to a likely Overwatch base, but the target is too open for Talon's high command to ignore, and so she has been dispatched to eliminate the monk. She has some backup, a few agents scattered throughout the crowd to drive her prey in case the Omnic receives word of the attempt and attempts to flee, but the kill is her responsibility. She snugs the Widow's Kiss to her shoulder and looks through the scope to the podium from which her target will be speaking. Just a few more moments.

The crowd is beginning to filter in, filling the open square where the monk is to speak. She pans her scope across the crowd, seeing her agents' faces spread throughout. "Do any of you have eyes on the target?" she whispers into her com-link. Her infra-sight can track Omnics, but it's not as easy as tracking humans, so she prefers to rely on visual sighting when she's hunting one of the robots.

Her agents respond with variations on the theme of "No," so she settles in to wait until the monk appears.

 _Tracer:_

Lena spots a flicker of movement on a rooftop. Normally, she'd dismiss it as a cat or bird, but a sudden flashback to the assassination of Mondatta makes her take a second look. She spots a red glint from the location and elbows her companions. "Hey. Look up there, three rooftops to the right of the street. Do you see anything?" Hana and Lucio peer up.

"Yeah, I see something… red and shiny?" Hana says curiously. "Whaddya think it is?

"All right. You two get up to the front of the crowd. If anything goes sideways, keep Lokhara alive. I'm going to go take a peek around." Lena starts pushing through the crowd; heading towards the door to the building which she is now sure is hiding Widowmaker on the roof. She dashes inside, and begins running up the stairs, pulling out her pistols as she does. She can't let this happen again. She reaches the door leading onto the roof, and hears the crowd begin to cheer as Lokhara enters, stepping up behind the podium arranged for him. Across the rooftop, she sees a certain blue-skinned figure looking through the sights of a sniper rifle, and dashes over. "Say, love, what're you looking at?" she asks.

The sniper gasps, spinning on the spot, her rifle reconfiguring in the blink of an eye. She opens fire, but Lena knows it's coming, and by the time Widowmaker's rounds pass through where she'd been, she's long gone. "Nice try, love," she mocks from fifteen meters away. "Nine out of ten for effort, anyways." She's trying to throw the sniper off balance, distract her long enough for Lokhara to get away. She readies her pistols, and zips sideways as Widowmaker fires again. The crowd is breaking up, people running as they hear gunfire, and Tracer sees Lokhara's bodyguards moving him off the stage. " _Vas te faire encule!"_ shouts the assassin, firing a grappling hook across the square and beginning to swing out over. Tracer leaps after her, using the gymnastic training she received from Amélie years ago, and sprays fire after her as she comes down to land.

 _Widowmaker:_

A burst of plasma from the annoying girl's pistols strikes the cable of her grappling hook, severing it, and she spins forward, straightening out and taking aim in midair. "Take down the target _now!"_ she shouts into her communicator, hammering another burst of rapid fire out, this time towards the monk and its bodyguards. Three of the black-clad guardians drop, but the monk is still alive, and her operatives run towards the group, which is struggling to reach the armored car in which the Omnic arrived. The bodyguards see them coming, and some of them draw pistols, returning fire. Suddenly, a burst of sonic energy appears from the side, and one of the Talon agents flies sideways, ribs crushed under the hammer-blow shockwave.

Widowmaker turns and sees a young Korean girl and a Latino man running towards her agents. She doesn't have much time, and she knows the op is blown, but she still has the chance to succeed in the main objective. She takes careful aim and fires a round through the gap in Lokhara's bodyguards… but it's stopped before it reaches them by a barrier of pure sound, as the little Korean girl fires her pistol from behind a tree and drops another of her agents. _Bâtards_ , she thinks. She makes a decision rapidly, and swings around. Before Tracer can reach her, she shoots, and Lucio staggers as the round strikes him. Then she is off, running as fast as she can, with her operatives following, and the Overwatch agents do not pursue. _Ce n'est pas parfait,_ she thinks to herself, _but now we know where they are._ That, in itself, is probably worth missing Lokhara.

* * *

A/N part two: You know how I mentioned that there would probably be a bit of a mess while I move and get settled in? Well, this is probably the last chapter I'll post for a while, but fear not! I shall continue writing, it just may be a while until you guys get the next chapter. Sorry if the wait is long, but the Eye and the Claw will return!


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